This past week has been pretty intense. We´ve had alot of class work. Right now I am reading Economic Hitman for class, which is a great book, I recommend it. We also had class on Wednesday and Thurday, then had meetings in the afternoons. On Wednesday we met with the Bishop of the Lutheran Church here, and apparently he was just named the Bishop of all Central America. He was really fun to listen to, quite a contrast from the other Bishop we met with. His church is vary active in liberation theology, so he spoke alot about how his church is active.
This morning we went to the United States embassy and spoke with a couple representatives. It went alot better than I had thought it would. The people we spoke with seemed to know the Salvadoran culture and people fairly well. Which is surprising given the context of the embassy. The embassy is the third largest embassy in the world, and it has tennis courts and a movie theatre, its really ridiculous. The people we spoke with even said that some people there have no clue about the culture here and speak no spanish. They spoke about a number of issues, gang activity and the war in Iraq because El Salvador has troops in Iraq. The also spoke about immigration. The do interviews for a number of visas there. To get an interview in costs 100 dollars and its a three minute interview! We also talked about the amount of Salvadoran immigrants in the United States. 500 Salvadorans leave for the United States a day! Right now ten percent of El Salvador lives in the U.S. and remittances are large part of the national income. It is predicted that if the FMLN doesn´t win in the elections in 2009, the number going to the US illegally will double to 1000 a day! Its a hard issue, and I see both sides of it. But being here and living with families and seeing how hard it is to make money, I can understand the desire to go. The minimum wage here is 3.50 (US currency, they have US dollars here) a day, which is not vary much. But thats enough rambling. For dinner we are going to an art gallery!!